Stimulus Bill Mandates Focus on Teacher Effectiveness

Language on Fair Distribution, Effectiveness Offers Policy Clues

By Stephen Sawchuk

The recently enacted economic-stimulus bill requires every state to take steps to improve teacher effectiveness, as well as to tackle one of the most pervasive problems in K-12 education: inequities in access to top teaching talent for poor and minority children.

In those two provisions, which governors must address to get their cuts of $53.6 billion in state fiscal-stabilization aid, some experts see glimpses into the future of federal teacher-quality policy.

“We have a lot of evidence that this administration is very interested in making effective teaching a priority,” said Sabrina W.M. Laine, the director of the National Comprehensive Center for Teacher Quality at Learning Point Associates, a federally financed technical-assistance center in Naperville, Ill. “The stimulus bill is wide open for interpretation, but it provides the proverbial shot in the arm for equitable distribution and for discussions to move a reauthorization bill [on education] forward.”

Whether the language in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act will have an actual effect on state and local teacher policies depends on the much-anticipated guidance for the state stabilization fund and on U.S. Department of Education oversight, analysts say.

An administration official said the language is intended to strike a balance between what states can do given their current capacity and the expectations for them to be more forward-looking on teacher quality.

“The intent here is not to expect some sort of dramatic change overnight,” Marshall “Mike” S. Smith, a senior adviser to U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, said about the teacher provisions. “It is, however, to expect states to see that this is a fundamental inequity and to begin to address it in a thoughtful way, and in a way that measurably advances the ball.”

Read the rest of this article in Education Week